The Pirate Party is now measured as the biggest political party in Iceland
visir.is
visir.is
The biggest one being; Stopping the nations talks with the EU and a few days ago withdrawing* the application without discussing it in the parliament and putting it to a national vote as both parties promised would be done before the elections.
This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago.
People saw that new people and new parties could do a better job then those 'professional' politicians and I think the Pirate Party is riding on that wave and every controversial decision and corruption allegations just strengthens people's believes that politics must change. It won't happen in 2 years or 6 years but we might start to see some big changes in 10 years time!
*The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.
It's great that Islanders express their dissatisfaction by reporting their votes on "the pirate party" instead of extreme right parties as we see it happening in some European countries.
Patriotism is seen as some kind of wrong thing as it could be taken offensive by immigrants. Unless you are in Asia - then its OK because it is accepted there that when you are a guest, you live by host rules. But for some reason both Europe and America is afraid to say that.
ANY kind of extreme left or right is wrong, but recently I see right parties going to the left slowly.
Saying "I don't like when people do XXX" or "I am unhappy that government pays for XXX" makes you extremist.
Saying this as an immigrant.
The actual left of Syriza has become very critical internally over that line, which they see as incoherent and not in tune with reality: in their view, the line Tsipras/Varoufakis are attempting to take just won't work, because it wants to promise staying in the Euro and then also a bunch of things that are incompatible with staying in the Euro, but won't admit that you need to pick one. Here is one interview with a left-wing Syriza MP, criticizing them along those lines: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/lapavitsas-varoufakis-gre.... You can differ over whether this line would be better, but I think it's more grounded in reality; Lapavitsas (the interview subject) imo much more clearly understands the concrete situation and what can and can't be done, and doesn't promise glibly that everything is simultaneously possible.
As distinct from the dominant political parties in the US ... how, again?
#Edit. It's just a question, people. I'm trying to figure out what default means in this whole Greece context.
Alternately, you use the threat of that default to renegotiate the debt on more favorable terms. This also happens with personal bankruptcy, though the situations aren't quite analogous (some creditors will negotiate a more favorable repayment plan with debtors who seem like they might otherwise declare bankruptcy).
Unfortunately for Greece, afaict they have less leverage now than they did in 2010. At the time, much of their debt was held by German and French banks, so there was a mutually assured destruction angle. France/Germany would probably not sit by and let their large banks go down with the ship in the case of a Greek bankruptcy. So they would be forced to bail out the situation one way or the other, either bailing out Greece and thereby indirectly bailing out their banks by giving Greece money to pay them, or letting Greece default and then bailing out their banks directly. Now most of the debt has been moved to institutional holdings (the European Central Bank, IMF, etc.) as part of the bailout, which is less directly threatening. Probably Greece should've bargained harder at the time, but the previous government was a bit spineless.
Right now Grease gets more new loans / year than they pay out in interest payments. So their debt keeps growing until their next default / restructuring. It’s a vicious cycle.
On the other hand if they defaulted and did not need to make interest payments, but could not make new loans their cash flow would be worse off. But, they would have a reasonable path to long term prosperity by simply keeping their books balanced.
Of course there is always the 3rd option of defaulting and then trying to make new loans and default again. But their already getting free money from the EU so there is little point in doing this now.
300,000 people
Everyone knows the other person, or a family member, or a friend, or a friend of a friend. It does not get any deeper than that.
New people and new parties were doing a great job of turning Iceland into a hedge fund, and did a pretty good job of that. A pretty successful hedge fund, until everyone in the words realised it was a pretty bad hedge fund.
Iceland is searching for a new bedrock. Going back to the old bedrock of fishing and... fishing, is unappealing to some. The political landscape is open to options becauseno one has any answers.
But I do see the last decade's rampant financial foolishness having unlocked a desire to cross borders and break out. Lords of fishing and having had a try at finance, why not dominate the finance of fishing across the oceans?
I would like to make a joke about how one doesn't simply escape the EU (see headlines about Greece's potential exit) once touched but we are way past that level of understanding.
Iceland could be the first country with a "liquid democracy" [2]
I think it's in the same document as the "Mass propaganda" / "Discredit an company/individual" slides.
That does not leave many potential voters.
Yeah, so left-wing voters avoid the party because of the right-wing extremists in it; right-wing voters avoid it because of its left-wing extremists; …
pro-woman -> woman in Latin is femina -> feminism
pro-man -> man in Latin is vir -> virilism (sounds stupid).
That's why.
woman -> femina, related to women -> femininus
man -> vir, related to men -> mas
As you can see it seems even the Romans did not like to make derivations from the old, old word "vir" (also see etymology for "world").
Feminine is from 'femininus', not 'femina'.
Masculine is from 'mas' -> 'masculus' (diminutive of 'mas') -> 'masculinus', not 'vir'.
'Mas' was never used to mean "man", only "male".
If instead of "feminism", the movement were called "femininism", then the opposite would indeed be "masculinism" as you suggest. But the opposite of "feminism" must be "virilism".
They might be on the right side of internet issues, but they are very much on the wrong side of much more important issues.
Sure, they're communists. But they're not the same as the Stalinist, Soviet-controlled SED.
If I support opinion X and want it to succeed, I should work hard to ensure that those who support X but don't know when to shut up get ignored, ostracised and removed from any public speaking positions in "my party"; so that in the public discourse the supporters of opinion X are represented by people who know when to shut up - because they will help X, but the cranks (with good motivation) will only hurt the cause.
Similarly, if two parties both support X but one doesn't know when to shut up, then you should vote and support only the other party and weaken the too-radical one.
The thing that really gets me though is that, as a 22 year old, I (and all the other members of my generation) are inheriting the current system with no input on how we got to the point we are at now and little to no say on how it works. I wonder if we will be able to fix things.
No party besides the democrat or republican party will be successful in the US because first past the post is a fundamentally broken model of democracy that always reduces into a base case of two parties. Combine that with the power of money in politics and gerrymandering and there is no way to fathom competition at the federal level.
> is appalling and disheartening.
For the most part American voters have demonstrated a lack of care for the aftermath of the financial crisis, given how they brought back a Republican majority in congress only four years after realizing how well that worked in the decade prior.
Which is mostly disingenuous, given how politicians in America are all consistently cut from the same cloth and serving the same (private) interests.
> are inheriting the current system
You actually aren't inheriting anything. Youth unemployment at an all time high, average income of bachelors graduates being around 26k a year, the lowest rates of property ownership in half a century, wealth concentration as high as the roaring twenties. The aging with power and money are holding onto it to their grave, and then only their blessed decedents will inherit the means of production. There is no mechanism to disseminate concentrated wealth back into the masses, especially the youth, anymore. Economics used to promote that, and policy used to enable that, but as we approach post-scarcity both have been sabotaged by generations that want to maintain control and power perpetually.
It's interesting, the UK has a similar sort of system, but the vote share of the major two parties has been consistently declining for fifty years. After WWII, almost everybody voted Labour or Conservative, now their combined share is about 65%. Soon, FPTP is going to start delivering some extremely odd results.
The hoops that parties (that aren't the Democrats or Republicans) have to jump through border on the insane in some states.
You've ran the experiment so many times that you know that it's "always"?
Young people could have a lot of say, but they don't vote. The national dialog would shift a lot (IMO) if young people educated themselves on issues, got their peers to engage in discussion, and participated in the political process especially by voting. Right now politicians that pander to the majority do so to the people that show up to vote, which is older people.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Voter_Tu...
If you will, try take that little spark, and reason it a little further. You'll find that the answer you eventually come up to is the following topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
Perhaps, then, if you're like me. You'll conclude that it's a really poor answer, and one with a whole lot of holes. Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further, and my apologies in advance if you think I'm putting words in your mouth by making a few assumptions above.
I know very little about Iceland's political system but suspect some translation problems with the language in that article.
Biggest would really only apply to seats won, while this reads to me as being 'most popular'
Still, really interesting.
I also suspect that the 'shun corruption' just means they havent been caught yet.
In the national elections Iceland is split up into six constituencies which hold certain amounts of seats in parliament. At the moment this (slightly) favours the four constituencies outside of the capital which also favours the 'old block' of parties which are more popular in the countryside/rural areas/small towns.
This survey is showing a big backlash agains those in charge after a string of controversial decisions and corruption allegations. The thing is though that I doubt this backlash will last for two more years. But I'm quite sure that the pirate party will at least double the amount of seats (they have 3 now).
No, they are actually quite decent people. Birgitta has been an advocate of term limits and intends to not run again (even if term limits are not imposed). She is an artist and has been a consistent defender of the average citizen. Jón Þór is in his first term and has decided to step down mid-term to allow his replacement time to acclimate to Parliament before the next election (which is in 2017, barring public uprising). Helgi Hrafn has indicated he intends not to run again. All of them are passionate about the outcome of the next election and intend to give support to the running candidates.
Corruption of the sort you see in USA does not happen as much in Alþingi, it's more nepotism by the executive (parliamentary rule, which is problematic) than blatant bribery by funding campaigns.
Grassroots for the Pirates is very active and these public servants, truly are serving the public, not the party.
Thankfully the pirate party advocates extreme transparency which should make "casual corruption" more difficult.
For now. They wouldn't be the first people to be corrupted by power.
Now they're as corrupt as the others.
Well, the funding that the parties in charge and their members of parliament got from the fisheries in the last elections can be considered a form of bribery. Especially when one of their first works in office was to make sure the fisheries make more money by paying less tax. (This issue is more complicated though).
5.1% in the last parliamentary elections (in 2013) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Iceland)
The survey charts show a rather meteoric very recent rise: http://mmr.is/frettir/birtar-nieurstoeeur/460
It'll certainly revert towards the mean, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them hold 7 or 8 seats in the next elections (out of 60-ish).
I'm 23 years old. My generation doesn't have the time or patience to wait in line to vote and fill out legal documents. We're used to apps that let us order delivery and message friends in a button tap.
The reason big money keeps winning is because our generation doesn't vote enough. If we make local and federal voting deadlines as simple as phone notifications, we're going to start seeing a a huge array of intelligent decisions injected into the political system.
The Pirate Party offers liquid democracy through online voting. I'm all for it, I hope Iceland sets an example for the rest of the world.
And yes, you are in my generation (Y). Please enlighten me in ways big money influences politics that cannot possibly be stopped by the democratic process.
"Big money" isn't directly buying votes. Increasing the number of votes doesn't make an election "more expensive" to buy. If you have only three candidates, to buy out their loyalty you need the same amount of money, regardless if you have one million of people voting for them or ten.
Direct democracy renders the process even worse. People cannot be fully informed about all topics at all times - I hope you realize how uncontroversial this opinion is. So they'll just find the information that is easiest to find and digest and be influenced by it. If you have enough money, you can be the easiest source of information in the topic you care.
Politicians don't get behind "go vote" initiatives out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because they think those extra voters will swing the vote in the favor of their particular party.
The reason why young people don't vote, I think, is mainly because indifference towards politics and/or the candidates, not because it's a hassle to vote.
Imagine an employer who demands that an employee produce proof that they voted a certain way.
Voting that is done in person, in private (for instance: voting booths) is less susceptible to coercion than voting which is not done in person (for instance: mail-in). Systems that give out a receipt for the vote placed are also more susceptible to voter coercion, particularly if they are mathematically provable receipts that cannot be fabricated (nearly all "blockchain" proposals).
But what amazes me even more is how much people CHOOSE not to vote. Do they really not care at all?
tl;dr: You can't have an organisation where everyone wants to do things differently.
Electronic democracy solves precisely nothing in practice because democracy is not about technology and mathematics, it's about the people.
What if you have a 50%+1 majority on your vote, and the other 50%-1 of the people are so actively against it and bitter that there is no way they will accept the result of the vote, let even cooperate? And by "50%+1" I don't mean 11 votes vs 10 votes in your library group, I mean like 100,000 votes for one side and 99,999 votes for the other. Can you seriously consider that the first side won the vote? Can you seriously do anything practical with 50%-1 members opposing you?
That is what was (and I think still is) happening in PP parties.
And on top of that there's all the usual issue of large-ish scale politics, with blocks forming, with small but screamingly loud minorities, etc. etc. which now, because of the digital medium each require attention. Do you wish to participate in a forum where you MUST, by the way of the forum's statutes, listen even to the most vitriolic, uneducated, screaming lunatic trolls, and be expected that you deal with those situations politely with "Thank you for your input. if 50% of the members agree with your idea to make tin-foil-hats mandatory, and declare war on Kazakhstan, we will."? Even if you are, a couple of years of that happening every single day will probably erode that attitude. Hence, no "sane" members, hence no votes.
Hm. I never heard of blocks in the pirate party. Luckily, it seems that the core pirates are too liberal for that. Things could go wrong, but then we simply start a new party.
And yes, we must listen to everyone. Whatever troll it might be. You must listen them to tell them otherwise and to learn from them. It might be the only way a democracy can function well.
So by increasing communication speed, diversity is less of a problem ? I guess my question is what is implied by communication speed ?
I think I'm missing something about the implications because it doesn't seem like communication speed would change anything, if the members are really stubborn.
Fast communication is actually just a feature for the outer world to tell them, what we work for, in time. Too often it isn't clear what we stand for to a fresh topic. The media is complaining and the reader starts to think badly about us.
I don't necessarily disagree with their views, but it helped water the identity of the party down to a level that made it indistinguishable from other liberal groups. Initially the PP also saw some influx from more conservative parties, which created an unstable equilibrium. Now it's just participating around in the usual left-wing infighting (vegans vs vegetarians, feminists vs egalitarians, and so on).
I think part of the reason is that Germans expect parties to cover more than "one issue" (even if that issue is as broad as the entire concept of "an open information infrastructure with a transparent government and strong personal privacy"), so there was an early effort to create a "full programme" covering virtually anything. We'd probably be better off if we had specialised interest groups instead of shrinkwrapped parties. But good luck making democracy more direct and modular when there is a centuries old legacy that portrays anything other than the existing faction-based system as unconstitutional and therefore evil.
The fight against the Bourgeoisie, while relevant for some, is not the focus of this party.
Particularly this part:
> This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago.
I am aware of the origin of the label at the international level, but it looked to me that in this particular case the origin dynamics were closer to Grillo's.